Three days later, at noon.
“4:00 PM today. Come to the restaurant at the address below. I am Fu Qianyu’s mother.”
Staring at the WeChat friend request sent by an absolute stranger, Jing Jiaxi was gripped by a sudden wave of panic, shifting restlessly in his classroom seat.
Was this… meeting the parent? But he hadn’t yet figured out how to face Fu Qianyu’s family.
And regarding the child—should he tell them?
……
Although Lang Youyuan desperately wanted to charge straight over to the little plaything her son was keeping to see what he was truly made of, she knew that to know oneself and one’s enemy was the key to a hundred victories. She did not entirely trust the dossier provided by Lu Zhili.
After all, Lu Zhili and that little plaything were love rivals; anything passing through his hands was bound to be heavily biased.
Exercising immense patience, Lang Youyuan hired someone to conduct a secondary, thorough background check on Jing Jiaxi.
Before long, a set of documents with a remarkably similar layout was delivered to her desk.
The unearned information wasn’t quite as egregious as the version Lu Zhili had provided, and she failed to locate the original source of those scandalous, explicit photographs.
However, the familial background of this boy named Jing Jiaxi was indeed profoundly chaotic.
He was entirely unloved by his father and utterly neglected by his mother. A gambling-addict younger brother acted like a parasite, clinging to the entire household to suck them dry, while the doting parents poured all their affection into the younger son, forcing Jing Jiaxi to work multiple part-time jobs from a tender age just to sustain the household.
Yet, his parents took every single cent of that hard-earned money and handed it over to the brother to squander.
His academic credentials were quite decent—he was enrolled at a top-tier national university, which spoke volumes about his sheer diligence given his impoverished upbringing.
If he were merely a hardworking, striving child, as long as Fu Qianyu genuinely favored him, it wasn’t as if he stood zero chance of marrying into the Fu family.
But if this diligence wasn’t utilized on the righteous path, and was instead channeled into devious machinations to cling onto a wealthy clan using nothing but physical beauty, then he was precisely the type of creature Lang Youyuan despised most.
Those who only fantasized about taking shortcuts possessed weak willpower and flawed moral fiber—the exact qualities most reviled by prominent elite households.
Compounded by Jing Jiaxi’s vampire-like family, Lang Youyuan’s absolute greatest terror was that Fu Qianyu would suffer a temporary lapse in sanity and actually marry him.
Tangling with shameless scoundrels wasn’t terrifying because of their chaotic tantrums; it was terrifying because it would utterly tarnish the family reputation and drag down the entire clan’s social stature.
The mere thought left Lang Youyuan feeling suffocated with irritation. She simply could not comprehend how her otherwise exceptional son had managed to fall for a boy he had barely known for any significant length of time.
Even if one was destitute, as long as they remained impoverished with dignity and moral integrity, she, Lang Youyuan, could find a justification to reconcile it to herself.
But this current situation was something Lang Youyuan found entirely, utterly incomprehensible.
Had her son been put under some kind of spell?
Lang Youyuan harbored an incredibly poor impression of Jing Jiaxi, finding herself thoroughly irritated the moment her eyes fell upon the boy’s clear, pristine smile in the photograph.
She resolved right then and there that she must personally go and confront this boy named Jing Jiaxi.
At 3:30 PM, inside an opulently decorated luxury restaurant, Lang Youyuan sat waiting in a private room, exuding an aura of pure menace as she sported a pair of oversized designer sunglasses, her luxury handbag draped over her arm.
Ding-dong.
A WeChat notification chimed on her phone.
Jing Jiaxi had officially added her as a friend, sending a highly apprehensive reply.
Lang Youyuan slid her sunglasses down, throwing a dismissive, sidelong glance at her phone screen.
“I am incredibly sorry, Auntie, but I am currently in the middle of a lecture. Would it be alright if I asked you to wait for a brief moment?”
The hand removing her sunglasses froze mid-air. Lang Youyuan’s eyelids twitched violently.
She had absolutely never been rejected in such a manner in her entire life!
Suffocating with an immediate wave of irritation, Lang Youyuan’s chest heaved deeply several times.
She pressed her fingers against her temples, entirely at a loss for how to respond to the boy’s laughably naive message.
Had it truly been that long since she last interacted with the younger generation?
An excuse like being in a lecture—and delivered with such raw, unvarnished simplicity—was something Lang Youyuan had not encountered in a very long time.
To the point where she couldn’t even discern whether he was utilizing passive-aggressive evasion, or if he was simply that painfully earnest.
Lang Youyuan patted her chest to smooth her breathing, her mind overflowing with internal critiques regarding this boy’s complete and utter lack of social grace and worldly wisdom.
Using her thumb, she aggressively pounded out a few forceful characters: “Focus on your lecture! Exactly what time will you arrive?!”
As a traditional Chinese parent, Lang Youyuan simply could not bring herself to command a student to skip class for her benefit.
Staring at the string of aggressive exclamation marks, Jing Jiaxi felt an intense wave of remorse for forcing an elder to wait.
On Lang Youyuan’s end, she merely witnessed the “The other party is typing…” indicator flicker across the top of her screen multiple times. Yet, after waiting for a full five minutes, not a single syllable materialized.
Just as she was on the verge of losing her patience entirely, a message finally popped up.
“I am truly, profoundly sorry. I am deeply apologetic, but my lecture does not conclude until 4:30 PM. I will rush over as absolutely fast as I can.”
Lang Youyuan let out a silent sigh, before coldly typing out a single character: “Mm.”
“Mm-mm.”
The immediate return of a double “Mm-mm” from the opposing side left Lang Youyuan with a profound sense of sheer powerlessness.
This was the formidable opponent she had braced herself to wage war against?
Chatting with him felt precisely like interacting with a small child. The adversary displayed such a pathetic level of strength that it stripped her of any desire to be challenged.
Could it genuinely be that her son favored this exact archetype?
It made absolutely no sense; what on earth was there to like about such a plain, pristine student?
Despite her utter bewilderment, Lang Youyuan maintained her fierce hostility toward Jing Jiaxi.
After all, according to the dossier, he had indeed spent time working in questionable, disreputable establishments. There was no guarantee those low-class photographs weren’t an absolute reality.
Lang Youyuan hooked her handbag over her arm, directing her chauffeur to pilot the vehicle to a neighboring luxury shopping mall.
She possessed absolutely no intention of sitting around idling away her time for that long. Instead, Lang Youyuan engaged in a bout of highly therapeutic luxury shopping inside the sprawling mall.
The sales associates presented the seasonal lookbook flush before Lang Youyuan’s eyes. She casually extended a finger to point out several pieces of apparel and footwear she favored, watching the models don the garments to showcase them for her.
Reclining comfortably against the plush sofa, she sipped lazily on a glass of chilled champagne delivered to her side, finally managing to temporarily banish those irritating matters from her mind.
Before she knew it, the time had drifted past 5:00 PM.
Lang Youyuan lifted her wrist to check her watch, only then putting a temporary halt to her shopping spree.
The mall staff beamed with radiant smiles as they escorted their financial deity out the door. Because the volume of purchases was entirely too immense, the mall dispatched personnel to deliver the items directly to her estate.
Lang Youyuan returned to the restaurant at an unhurried, leisurely pace.
The boy had sent her a message at precisely 4:05 PM, stating that he had arrived.
Calculating the distance from the university to the restaurant, his promptness could at least be considered highly proactive.the absolute second she stepped into the private dining room, she caught sight of the boy sitting rigidly in his chair, looking incredibly strained.
The moment he witnessed her entry, he scrambled to his feet instantly.
“Hello, Auntie.”
Lang Youyuan’s eyes swept carelessly over his entire frame from head to toe.
His hands were clenched tightly out of sheer anxiety, his complexion was laced with unease, and from the crown of his head down to the very tips of his toes, he practically radiated an overwhelming aura of: ‘I am terrifyingly nervous.’
Yet, his face was entirely devoid of a single blemish or visible pore; the living reality of him was infinitely more defined, vivid, and breathtakingly radiant than any university headshot or covertly captured photograph.
His aura was profoundly pure and transparent, yet because his facial features were so peerlessly beautiful, it possessed a striking, almost piercing level of loveliness.
His appearance was undeniably top-tier—more breathtakingly beautiful than any cinematic movie star she had ever laid eyes upon. A single glance delivered a violent, front-facing assault of pure aesthetic perfection.
With a face of such magnificent quality, it was no wonder Qianyu had invested his attention.
Unfortunately, if his moral core was corrupted, even the most magnificent face would not suffice.
Lang Youyuan sat down with practiced elegance into the chair he had pulled out for her, completely refraining from reminding the boy that the servers stationed by the side were explicitly paid to handle that task for her.
She flipped casually through the menu, posing her questions in a level tone.
“What is your name?”
“Jing… Jing Jiaxi.”
Facing a lady who possessed an identical, crushing aura of absolute dominance to Fu Qianyu caused Jing Jiaxi’s palms to break out into a cold sweat.
He could not prevent his hands from trembling uncontrollably.
Lang Youyuan continued her interrogation in a heavy, deliberate register: “Age.”
“Eighteen.”
Ha. A mere eighteen years old, yet instead of walking the righteous path, his entire mind was consumed with scaling the social ladder through a man.
Lang Youyuan made absolutely no attempt to mask the sheer cynicism in her gaze. Her calculated up-and-down scrutiny left Jing Jiaxi feeling unaccountably breathless and defensive.
Lang Youyuan retracted her gaze, delivering a lazy, flat command: “Sit.”
Only then did Jing Jiaxi nod obediently, quickly settling himself back into his seat.
His legs had grown so weak they had been on the verge of buckling entirely.
Witnessing his hands clasped tightly over his thighs—the textbook sitting posture of a hyper-submissive student—Lang Youyuan couldn’t help but let out a cold, mocking sneer.
“There is no need to be quite so terrified. Summoning you here was merely intended to grant me an introduction to Qianyu’s latest plaything. I simply wish to ask a few casual questions.”
“Plaything”—her choice of vocabulary carried a deeply piercing, jagged edge, sounding precisely as though she viewed him as nothing more than a disposable piece of entertainment that Fu Qianyu could discard at his absolute whim.
Jing Jiaxi balled his hands into white-knuckled fists hidden beneath the privacy of the table, exerting every ounce of his willpower to restrain himself from biting his lower lip—an action that would only expose just how profoundly defensive and guilty he felt.
“Please, ask whatever you wish. I will disclose everything I am aware of to you.”
“How exactly did you and Fu Qianyu cross paths?”
Lang Youyuan already possessed a comprehensive understanding of the boy’s familial metrics and upbringing.
The singular detail that had remained entirely locked away from her investigation was precisely when—and through what exact machinations—the boy had managed to climb into her son’s orbit.
Because Fu Qianyu had completely locked down all traces of information surrounding that specific night, to any outside observer, the boy appeared to have materialized entirely out of thin air.
The nature of their relationship was shrouded in complete, impenetrable mystery, leaving Lang Youyuan highly uncertain of what permanent attitude she should adopt toward him.
The question caught Jing Jiaxi completely off guard, rendering him instantly frozen.
How on earth was he supposed to articulate the truth?
Was he supposed to announce that he and Mr. Fu had met through a one-night stand?